Surprise! This Idaho Spring Pastime Can Put You In Jail

Idaho's Forbidden Flowers

Idaho spring is here at last. After a long cold winter, the snow is finally melting and roadsides are beginning to bud with fresh wildflowers. But before you start imagining how beautiful a bouquet of fresh-picked wildflowers would look in your entryway, think twice. Stopping to smell the flowers, that's perfectly fine; going beyond that, however, is another matter entirely.

Including Idaho's state flower, the syringa, which flowers from late May through July, it's illegal to pick over a dozen kinds of wildflowers in the Gem State. According to Idaho Statute 18-3911, "It shall be unlawful for any person in this state to willfully and negligently cut, dig up, trim, pick, or remove, any plant, flower, shrub, bush, fruit or other vegetation growing upon the right of way of any public highway within this state."

Scroll on for a gorgeous gallery of Idaho's forbidden flowers.

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